I put about 200 miles on the truck today and decided to take a peak under the hood when I got home. There was traces of coolant on the alternator, and some on the air box and some on the lower radiator hose. I got under the truck and there is a water leak on front of the engine [:@]. I am sure its coming from the water pump and it leaks about a drop each second.

Anyone had their W/P giving up on their 2003/2004? How much for the repair at the dealer? Is there a write up somewhere?

Thanks in advance,

Gio

 

you know what. . .look at this instead. . .check the overflow hose and make sure it is tight. I found mine was loose and dripping coolant at an alarming rate onto my BHAF. to solve this I put a zip tie on it and pulled it as tight as I could. havent had a problem since.

 

That was a little loose too but you can see the coolant coming from around the pulley over to the airbox while the overflow hose is dry. At the positive note, autozone sells w/p for about $60.

I am so dissapointed. I am about to weld some fenders on my trailer, weld a 12.5k a-frame bulldog receiver and a pintle mount on my truck to tow my play car over 1000 miles in June and nowI have to worryabout a w/p as well.

 

Water pump shouldnt be too hard to change. Drain the coolant, Pull the belt off then a couple off bolts. Pull the pump. Swap the pulley over to the new pump and put back together. There ain't much to these water pumps. I'd probably toss in a new t stat and new coolant while you got everything apart.

 

as drew said you should do the overflow hose thing first clean everything off and give it a try . hate to say have done a few headgaskets that leak in that right front corner also that waterpump is fairly durable and have rarely put a new one on unless it had alot and a mean alot of miles on it. but clean it and take a look at it.

 

I took the truck by a dodge dealership and they concluded the coolant leak is due to a failing w/p. SO i am putting a new w/p this weekend that I got from autozone ($59.95). Wish me good luck. Will post some pics after its done.

 

If you can, go to a semi truck shop and pic up some red CAT coolant. This stuff is about 6x better then the automotive stuff. Has a lifetime of 300k miles before needing changed

 

Hey Aruba,

Replacing the water pump is really easy. I had to replace mine back a couple months ago when I had about 100,000Km on my truck. It was really easy, and took about 2 hours max. As Jake mentioned its just a mater of draining the coolant and then removing a couple bolts. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get pictures as I had to do mine in the middle of the night.

Good luck on the replacement and let us know how it goes.

 

Tried to undo the fan assembly and that f!@# is not moving so I got around it (I not good following direction but good with shortcuts).

Remove the 4 bolts to the fan shroud and folded it
Remove the bolts holding the fan shroud
Remove the top radiator hose
Remove the belt and you willhave good accessto the 2 10mm bolts holding the waterpump (I had to use a 1" extention) and gave it a tab with a 2x4, sucker sucker came off like nada. I had to turn the fan a bit to get the wp out. Turn it the other way a bit to put the new one back in.

 

pic of leak